Genesis 41:19

Summary

The verse describes seven additional cows in Pharaoh's dream, characterized as weak, badly formed, and thin of flesh. Pharaoh states, in his own words, that he had never seen cows this bad in appearance anywhere in the land of Egypt.

Key words

• hiNneh ("there!", H2009) — presentative interjection marking a vivid shift in the dream-vision, drawing attention to the new set of cows as they appear.
• dallot ("weak", H1803B) — feminine plural adjective agreeing with parot ("cows"), the first term in a triple description of the animals' condition.
• ra'ot ("displeasing of", H7451H) — feminine plural adjective in construct form, governing to'ar ("form", H8389); together they form the phrase "bad of form," i.e., poor in appearance.
• raqqot ("thin of", H7534) — feminine plural adjective in construct, governing basar ("flesh", H1320): "thin of flesh," a second construct pair paralleling ra'ot to'ar.
• ra'iti ("I have seen", H7200G) — qal perfect, first person singular, expressing completed action: Pharaoh asserts a finished state of not-having-seen such cows before.

What the text says

The verse opens with ve-hiNneh ("and there!"), the same presentative construction used earlier in the dream narrative to mark the entrance of a new element—here, the seven additional cows (sheva parot acherot). The participle olot ("coming up") describes their emergence as ongoing action within the vision, followed by acharei-hen ("after them"), a construct phrase with a third-person feminine plural suffix referring back to the first set of cows.

The description of the cows' condition is built through a chain of construct phrases: dallot stands alone as a simple adjective ("weak"), while ra'ot to'ar ("bad of form") and raqqot basar ("thin of flesh") are both construct constructions, a common Hebrew way of forming compound descriptive phrases where the adjective in construct state is bound to the following noun. The adverb me'od ("very") intensifies ra'ot to'ar specifically.

The second half of the verse shifts to first-person testimony: lo ra'iti ("I have not seen"), a qal perfect verb, followed by ka-hennah ("like them")—a comparison marker plus feminine plural pronoun. The phrase la-ro'a ("to the badness" or "in badness") uses the preposition la with the definite article, indicating the respect in which no comparable cows existed—that is, in degree of ugliness—anywhere be-khol eretz Mitzrayim ("in all the land of Egypt").

Differences between versions

The Hebrew text presented here contains no reference to a river or to grazing, but the LXX text (LXXSWETE) includes "ἐκ τοῦ ποταμοῦ" ("out of the river") and "ἐνέμοντο ἐν τῷ ἄχει" ("were grazing in the reed-grass"), elements not present in the Hebrew word list provided for this verse. The Vulgate compresses the double construct description (ra'ot to'ar / raqqot basar) into two adjectives, "deformes et macilentae" ("deformed and thin"), and recasts the final clause as a result construction ("ut numquam... viderim," "so that I have never seen") rather than the more direct Hebrew statement "lo ra'iti kahennah" ("I have not seen the like of them").